A Blueprint to Live By at Riverwalk? : Design: The massive Mission Valley project still has some hurdles to overcome, but it could point the way to the future.

A progressive transit-oriented, mixed-use development called Riverwalk may point the way toward a livable San Diego in the next century, although it would also wipe out one of the few remaining substantial patches of open space in Mission Valley.

City planners and environmentalists alike view dense, transit-oriented developments (TODs) such as Riverwalk as the wave of the future, a way to make efficient use of mass transit, reduce auto use and slow development in the outer reaches of the county.

Riverwalk would occupy the existing site of the Stardust Country Club’s golf course on 200 acres between Friars Road and the San Diego River, west of Fashion Valley. (The project is unrelated to other recent large developments in the area.) Development would begin in 1995 and take 20 years.

Originally approved by the City Council in 1988 as an awkward collection of isolated apartments, condominiums, offices, retail and hotels, Riverwalk is in the process of being redesigned as a true mixed-use development, interconnected by tree-lined streets and sidewalks.

In the original plan, the trolley station would have been underground and not central to the project. In the new plan, submitted to city planners last month, it is above-ground and the focus of Riverwalk’s town center.

Chevron Land & Development Co., Riverwalk’s developer, decided to redesign the project in 1989, when the recession hit and there was a growing oversupply of office space in San Diego. The company decided to reduce Riverwalk’s office space and add residential. It hired SGPA Architecture & Planning of San Diego to rewrite the Riverwalk “specific plan,” the guiding development document approved by the city.

SGPA helped design the Uptown District, the Hillcrest project that has been praised for its sensitive blending of retail, office and residential uses. When architects Mike LaBarre and Mark Fehlman left SGPA 10 months ago to start their own company, Fehlman LaBarre Architecture Planning, they kept the Riverwalk project.

At the same time, plans for a Mission Valley San Diego Trolley line moved forward. With the line scheduled to begin service in 1997, Chevron decided a trolley station should be the energizing feature of Riverwalk’s town center.

On Tuesday, the City Council approved new “transit-oriented development guidelines,” drafted for the city by San Francisco planner Peter Calthorpe, a well-known advocate of TODs. Although Calthorpe hasn’t worked on Riverwalk, Chevron and its planning architects agree with his ideas.

After more than a year of hearing Calthorpe’s ideas about TODs as he drafted the new guidelines, city planners will undoubtedly keep his suggestions in mind in the months ahead as they review the new Riverwalk specific plan.

The Sierra Club endorsed the original specific plan, but it has not yet taken a position on the new one, which should be presented to the City Council for consideration early next year. Citizens Coordinate for Century III, another San Diego environmental group, has not taken a position on the new plan either, but generally supports the TOD concept.

The City Council approved the original specific plan for Riverwalk after the developers promised to install a trolley stop and tracks at a cost of about $10 million, as well as public improvements such as parks, flood control and landscaping, at an additional $10 million.

With the flood control system, the San Diego River would always have some water in it. With its parks and pedestrian and bike paths, the river would become a visual and recreational asset. With adjacent landscaped areas, it could also supply usable new habitat for wildlife species, according to Chevron, which says it will preserve more than 70 acres of the site as open space.

But these financial commitments and public improvements are not yet guaranteed. Chevron’s obligation will be renegotiated as part of the new specific plan.

The key to Riverwalk’s ultimate success is not only the TOD concept, but the architecture, which would adhere to design guidelines to be drafted by well known New York architect Robert A. M. Stern with Fehlman LaBarre.

The project would include 6.3 million square feet of development--2,500 apartments and condominiums, 1,000 hotel rooms, 2.1 million square feet of office space and about 150,000 square feet of retail space. Its residential neighborhoods would be roughly twice as dense as typical suburban apartment and condo developments.

As yet, there’s no telling what Riverwalk’s buildings would look like. Chevron plans to get the project’s new specific plan approved, install essential infrastructure (roads, parks, river improvements, trolley station) beginning in 1994 (when the golf course’s lease expires), then sell off parcels to individual developers to build the many buildings.

Architectural guidelines will need to be specific enough to dictate sensible design and minimize the visual impact of intense development, but not so specific that they stifle creativity. Early models and drawings by the architects are encouraging.

Buildings at Riverwalk would step up in height between the river and Friars Road, from 50 feet near the river to 150 feet at the town center to 250 next to Friars, which would help preserve the river and adjacent public parks as inviting open space.

As originally conceived, Riverwalk was laid out like other typical 1970s and ‘80s developments, with its various uses isolated on different portions of the site, not interconnected by a logical system of streets and sidewalks. A four-lane road through its center would have made auto circulation a higher priority than accommodating pedestrians.

In the new specific plan, these uses are mixed, with office and residential above ground-level retail in the town core, and some retail proposed for the residential neighborhoods. Under the new plan, the project would be tied together by smaller tree-lined streets and sidewalks, laid out in a logical grid pattern.

Outside the town center, Riverwalk would feature carefully planned residential neighborhoods, with buildings arranged around parks or public greens, or along the river or a man-made canal.

Chevron hopes to attract a mix of small and large developers to build residential projects, ranging from 50 to hundreds of units, instead of a few mega-developers. This would ensure architectural variety and avoid the kind of monotony typical of some gigantic 1980s tracts.

It would be a short stroll from any apartment or condominium to the town core of Riverwalk--much different from 1980s developments such as Carmel Valley (formerly known as North City West) east of Del Mar, where concrete-block walls and cul-de-sacs prevent residents from walking directly to their neighborhood shopping centers.

Theoretically, the 4,250 who would live in Riverwalk, or the 9,000 people who would work there, would seldom need their cars. Shops, parks and necessary services would be within easy walking distance, and the trolley station would be less than a quarter of a mile from all residences.

Riverwalk is still far from a guaranteed success. First, Chevron needs city approval for its new specific plan. Then it will have to sell the project to developers, who are generally prone toward the status quo, not something new. In turn, the developers will have to market Riverwalk to their bankers, and to residents, office and retail tenants who would eventually occupy the buildings.

There are still a lot of “ifs” hanging over Riverwalk, and there are those who won’t easily forgive the loss of the golf course--both as open space and a recreational amenity. But it makes sense for San Diego to grow into areas like Mission Valley that are centrally located and close to mass transit, instead of into more pristine outlying areas. Projects like Uptown and Riverwalk illustrate a way that San Diego can accommodate a growing population with jobs and housing, without becoming a gigantic freeway snarl by the year 2000.